


In Absentia

by holyfant



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Series, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 21:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3223565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When Kieren... left, my family went into freefall."</p><p>Sue tries to cope, and finds it hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Absentia

 

On the news, the anchors have started talking about a cure. The Secretary of Health, harried and pallid, gives a press conference: “Since Britain was the epicentre and starting point of the worldwide phenomenon known as The Rising, we have strived to take our place alongside other nations as principal funder and talent recruiter for research into measures to strengthen national security and protect our citizens –”

 

Jemima, passing through the living room with a lot of noise, loading her gun: “Looks like a fuckin' rotter 'imself,” and then she's gone.

 

“... yet despite this encouraging news,” the Secretary goes on, “we must _urge_ our citizens to _stay vigilant_ , especially in the high-impact areas as designated by the Departments for Health and Partially Deceased Affairs –”

 

Steve turns the tv off.

 

-

 

Twenty-three-year-old Jenny Oddie dies that night, and the parish groups together in the makeshift church the next morning. Everyone is wet and shivering. Vicar Oddie simply stands up on his pulpit, not speaking, and looks at them all until someone starts to clap, and the applause swells until it drowns out the rain pounding the ceiling.

 

Sue claps along, thinks about Jenny, about how she used to come round every spring to sell biscuits and waffles for the parish fundraiser, and about how she wore her hair in pigtails until she was fifteen. Sue thinks about Jem. As she does every day, she thinks about Kieren too, and prays, prays, _prays._ Prays in this shack of lost souls for both her children – please, God, keep the one I still have alive, and _please, God_ , let the one I've lost stay dead.

 

-

 

Radio Lancashire, now known now as “the Human station”, staunch supporters of the HVF, and the only wavelength that Sue can still receive on her radio:

 

“So what's this about a _cure_ , then, eh, what d'you think about it, Mags?”

 

“I think it's a load of bollocks! Nothin' cures those things but a good brainin'!”

 

Spirited murmurs of assent.

 

“Even if it works –” someone starts.

 

“It won't work!”

 

“You can't bring what's died back to life! To proper life!”

 

“Even if it works,” the person persists, “what would happen to 'em after, eh? Put 'em back into the homes they tried to break down, with the people they tried to eat? Next to the neighbours they ripped apart?”

 

“I don't buy it fer a second. Government's said they had it under control when they clearly didn't, so why shouldn't this just be a load of crap too?”

 

“Well, we've got a caller now whose daughter was killed a few months ago and she'd like to share –”

 

Sue turns off the radio, and in the silence that follows she realises it was the first time that day she'd heard another human being speak.

 

-

 

Steve has boarded up all of the vulnerable glass in the foyer and the rest of the windows, and they keep the lights out as much as they can at night; light and sound attracts them. Sue lies awake in bed each night, listening up, trying to hear Jemima coming home – she often doesn't, and every time Sue is drowned in a deep, choking fear of what has happened to her daughter. She's told Jem once that she worries, and Jem'd said “For fuck's sake, mother, if I'm not home I'll be at Lisa's,” but it doesn't help, at all.

 

Sue doesn't even know whether they're nightmares or thoughts, these images of Jem dying, bleeding out, her brains scooped away. Worst are the ones where it's – where it's _Kieren_ , her beautiful bright-eyed boy rendered monstrous by her imagination, cracking his sister's head like an egg the way she's seen one of the – the rotters – do to Gemma Graham when they were ambushed on their way to church.

 

-

 

“– the first cases of PDS sufferers being reinstated in their former homes have been called an all-round success by the Secretaries for Health and Partially Deceased Affairs in their joint press conference,” the news anchor says, seriously. “Both Secretaries have stressed the success rate of the treatment with the drug Neurotryptiline, which stimulates brain function and which reportedly has a positive impact on 85% of PDS sufferers.”

 

A shot of the two Secretaries, a blonde woman and a bald man. “Neurotryptiline, which has gone through several phases of critical testing, has now been proven to have no serious short-term side effects and to be reliable. Long-term testing is still going on, but our earliest subjects have been medicated for six months and are showing no regression or immunity,” the woman says, smiling. “The effects are astounding and undo almost all symptoms of the Partially Deceased Syndrome, returning the patients to their pre-risen states in all emotional and intellectual aspects.”

 

There's an uproar amongst the journalists at the conference, but the image cuts back to the news anchor, who appears to be leaning forward in genuine interest, hands clasped in front of him. “Another note to our viewers,” he says. “We have received the request from the Department of Partially Deceased Affairs to urge the still active factions of the Human Volunteer Force to capture, rather than kill, any untreated PDS sufferers they may encounter on their patrols, so that they can be collected for treatment.”

 

“God, turn that shit off,” Jem says harshly from the kitchen, where she's making a sandwich for her patrol.

 

-

 

“Steve,” Sue says that night when Steve gets into bed next to her, “what if Kieren –”

 

Steve's movement stills, his back towards her. He's wearing the blue-and-white striped pyjamas that Jem and Kieren had bought him for his thirty-ninth birthday.

 

“What if he's – one of them? What if he can be treated? They said, didn't they, that it – _affected_ – people who died in 2009, so –” she falters, courage bleeding away at his silence.

 

Her husband slowly lowers himself onto the mattress. His expression is blank.

 

“Please, Steve,” she says, eyes prickling with tears.

 

“He hasn't been seen anywhere round here, Sue,” he finally says. “And if he had, the patrols would've – so either way, I don't think we should get our hopes up.”

 

“Get our hopes up,” she echoes him flatly. “I shouldn't – hope that my, my eighteen-year-old son, who _we_ didn't protect, who never said anything – and you're telling me I shouldn't _hope_ ,” and she starts to cry, even though she'd told herself she wouldn't.

 

Steve turns towards her a little and puts his hand on her arm, squeezing it. She moves into it and he takes the hint, wrapping his arm around her. “Shhhh,” he shushes her, and she does love him, she does, even with everything that's happened and that he hasn't done, and she cries into his neck, clinging to his pyjama shirt.

 

She calms down after a while, and he continues to hold her, rubbing his hand over her back.

 

“Sue,” he says quietly. “Love. He's gone. It's no good to think anything else.”

 

She takes a breath – the mild, familiar scent of his body, smells of soap and fabric softener – and pulls away.

 

“We'd only get disappointed if it isn't true,” he continues earnestly.

 

She feels so exhausted all of a sudden, and all she wants to do is go to sleep. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “Suppose you're right.”

 

-

 

One morning, Jemima is home for breakfast, and she's wide-eyed, drained of all colour, and vicious.

 

“We've got eggs,” Sue tells her. “Ken's chickens have started laying again since he's put the boards up around their enclosure.”

 

“I don't want a fuckin' egg,” Jem says, and it almost seems like a rote response; her face is blank, and she's staring off into the distance.

 

“Don't talk to your mother like that,” Steve says, but it comes out as perfunctory from him, too.

 

“ _Sorry_ ,” Jem bites, and that's worse, really.

 

“I'll have an egg, love,” Steve says, and he tries to smile a little, and she hates him sometimes.

 

-

 

Later that day, Lisa Lancaster's name is in the list of deceased that is read out every day on radio Lancashire.

 

Sue goes over to Ken's, crossing the road hurriedly, and buys one of his chickens off him. She roasts it slowly with some of the rosemary from the garden, because that's how Jem likes it.

 

Steve sits down to eat it when teatime rolls around, prodding at a chicken leg with his fork.

 

“Hmm, looks great.”

 

Sue observes him, the way he eats away at the leg and doesn't even seem that unhappy. It's – not fair, she knows, because, well, she _knows_ him, and she knows how capable of love he is, but so often these days she doesn't feel it from him anymore. Ever since Kieren – and that wasn't Steve's fault, _either_ , but she doesn't know which is worse, blaming her dead son or her living husband.

 

Steve doesn't comment on Jem's not being there, and eats three pieces of chicken.

 

-

 

Vicar Oddie warns them against the government's lies. “There was no one here to help us when they promised there would be,” he thunders from the pulpit. “The brave souls of this village have saved themselves, armed themselves with righteousness against the evils of the age. We will not be deceived by this new attempt to take our power away! We shall not allow them to make us believe these monsters have any place in society!”

 

There's lots of _yeah_ s and _well said_ s in the audience. Sue glances at Steve, who's listening with a slight frown on his face.

 

“We have sacrificed our children!” the vicar goes on, incensed, spittle flying from his mouth. “We have sacrificed our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters to this fight!”

 

The HVF band at the back of the church agrees loudly. Sue looks over her shoulder and sees her daughter – her beautiful, living daughter – clapping with an intense look of anger on her face.

 

“We will not let them have died in vain. We _shall not stand down_!”

 

General applause.

 

-

 

Nothing changes in Roarton. Never has, never will.

 

-

 

Steve gets the mail. He always has; that's one of his _things_. Even when everything was still in chaos and everyone was told to stay indoors during the first days of the Rising, when there were corpses stumbling about in the street and the groaning was audible into the night, Steve would go outside with his nailed plank of wood and get the mail. He even went to check the box in the weeks when the mailman didn't come, and was clearly relieved when the post service resumed (with a new mailman).

 

Steve gets the mail. He always has.

 

-

 

“Sue,” Steve says. He's got a letter in his hand. He blinks. “Sue.”

 

“Hm?” She's making soup.

 

“Sue, I think you... you'll want to read this.” He holds the letter out to her. All the colour is draining from his face, and she frowns at him.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

“Yeh,” he breathes, and takes a step towards her. “Sue, read it.”

 

She takes it from him warily, and watches as he all but stumbles into the sofa and – covers his face with his hands and makes a sound, a small sound that she knows. It's the sound that Steve makes before he starts to cry. She's got it on film from their wedding video, and she remembers it from Kieren's and Jemima's births and – and from Kieren's funeral.

 

She shakes the letter open, fear blooming in her gut; a glossy blue folder falls out.

 

 

 

 

_London, October 4 th 2012_

 

 

 

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Walker_

 

 

_We are pleased to inform you that your son, Kieren Walker, born on March 18, 1991 and officially deceased on November 30, 2009 has been enrolled in the Partially Deceased Syndrome (PDS) Sufferer Rehabilitation programme in the Norfolk Partially Deceased Syndrome Treatment Centre for two weeks. He has shown definitive positive response to treatment, and in three weeks he will therefore be eligible to take part in the PDS Domiciled Care Initiative, as explained in the folder enclosed with this letter._

 

_A trained PDS Community Care Officer will be assigned to your case, and they will be your primary caregiver, responsible for medical assistance and information._

 

_As Kieren's legal guardians, you are responsible for taking him back into your household. If, however, there are serious objections towards this, please contact the Department for Partially Deceased Affairs through the form enclosed. Be aware that there are strict regulations for refusing a PDS sufferer back into their original households and that as legal guardians you are responsible for providing alternative housing._

 

_If you have any further questions or concerns, the PDS Support telephone help line is open each weekday from 8am to 6pm._

 

 

 

_Cordially yours_

 

 

_Henry Wicker_

_MP for West Lancashire_

 

 

_Ronald Patton_

_Secretary of State for Health_

 

 

_Susan McDonald_

_Secretary of State for Partially Deceased Affairs_

 

-

 

When Jem comes home from patrol, she finds her father sitting on the sofa, shaking, his face in his hands, and her mother at the table, cheeks wet, clutching a letter.

 


End file.
